What's Dis?

Huh? Where am I? What's dis Interweb thing?

Why iz it so hard type wif dese mittens on? What does dis say, I cannot read.

Oh, hai. My name is Rebecca Marquis and I was born yesterday at 7:25 pm. I do not like to miss Jeopardy!, so I came out just in time.

I weigh 6 lbs and 10 ounces. I really like eating. My mommy and daddy are pretty cool people, but I'm not sure they know what hey are doing.

Ok, I'm bored and tired now. I go bak to seepin. Kiss me I'm cute. Luhzu all, bye bye!

There is No Defense For Chaos

"You're being unreasonable," I declared. My voice was not raised, though the exasperation was evident. That was the last sentence I got out before the macaroni and cheese hit me in the face.

Fortunately, that was the worst part about baby-sitting my two-year old niece this week. You can read as many books as you can, grill as many parents as you know, and watch as many DVDs and television programs you have time for, but nothing will prepare you for being a parent like babysitting. And by "will prepare you," I mean, "will make you realize how ill prepared you are."

I'm actually playing it off far worse than it was - for myself, my niece, and my wife - but the exchange above, the macaroni incident, highlighted something that I've neglected to consider: it is nearly impossible to have a logical conversation with an illogical child.

What brought that epiphany to light was actually chocolate milk. Carrying my niece in my arms, I was getting something out of the fridge when, spying her sippy cup, she requested chocolate milk. Thing is, that sippy cup had regular milk in it. Her chocolate milk was already out on the table. For a split second, I was about to be Awesome Uncle and hook her up with her chocolate milk. But two different cups with two different milks was too much for my niece to comprehend at the moment and, after trying to explain the situation to her, and steer her away from the regular milk in the fridge, finally exclaimed, "You're being unreasonable!" My words must have shook her, because she tossed her pacifier in my general direction, which landed on a fork, which Mouse Trapped into half a bowl of macaroni flying in my general direction.

Now, the situation isn't nearly as dramatic as I've described it and both my niece and I moved on better people. She was calling for me to sit next to her and read stories just minutes later. But it made me realize that I've spent years trying to form logical arguments, and now I have to prepare for just the opposite.

My Lovely Wife is an attorney. She's a damn good attorney, too. Her mind, her mentality, her inherent logical thinking has put her in a position to be atop her chosen field in due time. Also, it means I have never, ever won an argument. I resigned myself to that a while back, but have been trying to fortify any position with my own brand of logic, in a desperate attempt to win any small concession. And now I have to change up my style again.

Practicing logical reasoning and critical thinking is no match for a child who wants that milk, right now. Oh, and that 2% milk better be chocolate by the time it hits her lips.

I may have to mount a different offensive in my rhetorical battle, but the outcome will still be the same. I'll never win an argument with any female in my family.

One Year Ago

There's been a bit of a semantic battle in my house this weekend. You see, one year ago this weekend, a biiiiig thing happened. The conventional position, advocated by the women in my life (wife, mother) is that one year ago today, my wife and I were married. My position is that one year ago today, I was snoozing my way across the country in first class. One year ago on this date, however, my wife and I were married.

Insufferably debating minute points like that is one of my favorite past times, which makes our one-year anniversary that much more impressive.

One year ago (on this date), at this time, I was lounging around a hotel room, anxiously killing time until it was time to go the church. Today, I find myself anxiously killing time until dinner time.

With all of the changes in our life over the past 12 months - the purchases, the pregnancy - we aren't doing anything elaborate to celebrate. There's no returning to honeymoon suite or weekend getaway. There isn't even any leftover cake from our reception to eat for dessert. It's just the two of us, spending a lazy Sunday afternoon together, trying not to overeat before we go to dinner this evening. She's taking a romantic nap while I write this sexy blog.

It might not seem glamorous, but it's perfect.

This Post Now Has A Title

There are six pillows in my house and currently five of them are adjacent to My Lovely Wife. The sixth lays on my side of the bed. This doesn't include the curved body pillow, who we affectionately call "Mr. Snuggle" that is currently next to the bed, should my wife need it. The last time there were this many pillows on my bed, I was making a fort.

If you are not, like me, a first-time expectant father, you may have stopped reading after the second sentence, where I claim to retain a "side of the bed." That statement may just invalidate every other thing I have written. Well, here we are, five and a half months into this pregnancy and I still have a side of the bed. I don't always sleep there.

It's no secret, either. After giving some men updates on how far along my wife is, they follow up with, "Are you sleeping on the couch yet?" The answer is, sometimes. We also have an air mattress. Where I sleep on any given night depends on several variables: how she feels, when I am coming to bed (beyond 30 minutes of her), when I have to wake up, how bad my breath is perceived to be, etc.

Tonight I placed two pillows under my wife's feet for the first time. I've marveled publicly about the physical changes a woman must withstand during gestation. Once again, I have no response or basic comprehension of how it must feel to be expecting. You would think that sleep - a time when even physical injuries can seem healed - would provide respite for an aching mother-to-be. But you'd be wrong. The closer a woman is to nine months, and the larger her belly is, the more difficult it is for her to sleep, in any position. It's already a chore to walk, to sit, to anything we take for granted, but for sleep to be elusive on top of it all, that's just cruel.

So I wisely sleep outside of our bed from time-t0-time. Tonight, I'm hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye on that Queen size pillow-top we paid so much for, but if not, that's understandable. And if i do? Well, I'll try not to steal the covers.

UPDATE No. 1 - Remember, when blogging late at night, to write your title first, otherwise, you'll just plain forget.

UPDATE No. 2 - I did not, as expected, sleep in my own bed last night. I tried to, but found my wife sleeping in a position that can only be described as "diagonal sprawl." Unable to find room for me, I retreated to the second bedroom.

Modern Medicine Miracle

"So, I was thinking about you dying..."

Now, that is a conversation starter! And that is also how I greeted my wife this afternoon when she came home from a successful trip to the maternity clothing store.

Funny thing about bringing a new life into the world. You think more about how you will depart. Things that seemed to be far off worries become sudden necessities: wills, godparents, insurance.

Remember when you drunkenly joked to your college roommate, "Ok, if I die, you can have my stuff?" That was a long time ago.

But what got me thinking about my wife dying was that only a few decades ago, childbirth may have killed her.

Centuries ago, a woman dying during childbirth was commonplace. Centuries ago, an infant had a far worse chance of seeing age one than it does today.

Today, when I hear about a woman dying during childbirth (typically from "complications"), I can only think how antiquated that sounds. But for us - for my wife - it is a very real possibility. Or at least it would have been.

Thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, my wife's childbirth will likely be death-free, though more pre-planned than we once thought. Her blood, usually the consistency of a fine marinara, is thinned twice daily. Potentially fatal blood clots never have the chance to form and my wife will not suffer a fate more suitable for a 17th Century European peasant.

So, with one calamity avoided, it's on to preparing for the next by making sure that should I meet a premature demise, that my family will be taken care of. Even in death, you can't stop being a responsible father.

Those Crazy Cravings

I've gotten asked a few times, "So is your wife craving anything?". My immediate answer is no, no she is not. My wife isn't screaming for pickle ice cream or late night pasta with any regularity. In fact, as I alluded to in a previous post, she isn't craving one particular food. But she is craving. And she knows that her loving husband will scour the ends of the earth (or at least the walkable neighborhood) to get her what she wants. I've been keeping track, too..

• Frozen Snickers (in mid-January)
• All Things Lemon (Squares, Bars, Tarts, Cookies, etc.)
• Brownie Sundaes
• Pizza (Margherita Pizza)
• Pickles
• Fried Eggs
• Greek...anything Greek
• Chipotle Burritos
• Wendy's
• "Something Chocolaty"
• "Something Tart"
• Pepperocini

She may settle on one thing, which would make planning and purchasing easier, but for now (with a 24-hour convenience store and grocery store nearby), I'm happy to cater to her craving whim.

UPDATE (3/9/07): I was instructed - 24 hours in advance - that upon my return home from work tonight, I am to come bearing Wonder bread, bologna, and relish. I haven't had any of those items in my refrigerator since I was about 18.

Love Is...

Love is spending eight hours in a tiny car with your wife, driving from store to store, plopping your butt into dozens of sofas, watching a holiday slowly slip away, deciding that the sofa you want was the first you saw and that you could have been home at noon (instead of 7:30 pm), with nothing to do but install a new flat panel HDTV...and look back and think about how good a day you had.

The Real Valentine's Day Post

Sorry about the fake-out last week, but today really is Valentine's Day. It is also precisely 200 days until my wife's due date.

I will not be sharing what my Valentine's Day plans are, because I don't want to tell you, and you don't really want to know.

But I do want to etch into the Internet ether just how much I love my wife, and how much she's meant to me over the years.

When we first met, back more than ten years ago, fresh out of high school, it was just a crush. Fitting for a boy weeks removed from his Senior Prom, it was a simple schoolboy crush. Meeting you then made the apprehension of college melt away. Now, don't go getting a big head about that -- it wasn't so much specifically you (you had a faraway boyfriend, remember) -- but more about the concept of you. A beautiful, smart, funny woman, plopped right into my Orientation Group. And if this was the first day, well, then surely the next four years would be memorable.

And the next four years were memorable- at least the parts that aren't too hazy. That school boy crush ebbed and flowed, but was always a part of me. I like to think that it wasn't entirely unrequited, as you would insist at the time.

What made those four years most memorable was what happened toward the end of that sophomore year. Those precious first steps, first conversations, first kisses of a new relationship. The circumstances were indeed peculiar, but, as time would prove, when you are in love, you are in love.

Since then we've had our ups and our downs, our own ebbs and flows. We broke up and returned to each other. We were separated by hundreds of miles, but spoke each night, like clockwork (plus, I found out that my clock does work in the middle of the night). I ran through the same emotions that I did when we first met - reverting back to a crush and moving forward from there.

But through it all, I never stopped loving you. Through thick and thin, good times and bad, I'm not sure that my feelings for you ever entirely left. We may have been "just friends," but you were a friend I loved, and I think you felt the same way.

Last year, when we married ("finally!" some would say) I found myself thinking about what love and relationships really are. Marriage is a commitment, an act of dedication spawned from love.

Having a baby goes beyond that commitment and dedication of marriage. Whether conceiving a child is a conscious or unconscious decision, our growing child is a manifestation of our love (in the literal and figurative senses).

And this Valentine's Day, beyond any chocolates I could buy, flowers I could send, or restaurants we could visit, knowing that we are bringing a child into this world together is all the gift I need.

It's been quite a year for our family. Going back 12 months, we've started a new job (you), moved, gotten married/gone honeymooning, started a new job (me), gotten pregnant (you, with help from me), and now we are about to close on our first home.

I gotta tell ya, I'm the luckiest school boy around.

A Weighty Issue

This might be the post that gets me killed.

I started this as "blog therapy," a way for me to vent, pontificate, document, and generally worry about my impending fatherhood. I can't shy away from my own thoughts.

It became apparent from the beginning that formerly taboo topics were suddenly up for discussion. I'm about to crash through the final taboo: My lovely, expectant wife, is starting to show.

Watching her trying to squeeze into work clothes that, just three months ago, she wore loosely, it was hard not to notice.

For men, it's easy to ignore (or be ignorant of) a woman's dramatic hormonal changes. Though my wife began going to bed early, she would always choose bed over an extra half-hour of television. I used to laugh when she would go to the bathroom before bed, then go back to the bathroom less than thirty minutes later: now, that happens four or five times before she finally goes to sleep.

But when she starts to show, even the most callous man can no longer ignore. And when I noticed, my first thoughts weren't about how this would affect me (which is rare), but were about her - and all pregnant women.

For many American women, from the moment puberty kicks in, body image and weight issues are paramount. Nearly 5% of all women in this country have a serious eating disorder, such as bulemia or anorexia. How does Life reward these rice cake-eating, treadmill-jogging, water bottle-toting women when they get pregnant? By gaining weight.

On the one hand, I imagine that pregnancy can be liberating, to a degree. No longer (or at least for nine months) do you have to worry or obsess about what others think of your body: You are pregnant, and that is the trump card.

But that hand is the abstract hand. The one that doesn't have to worry about how that top button is going to close or if the zipper is going to make it all the way to the top.

In reality, at least for the next few weeks, my wife is caught between squeezing into her current clothes, buying some clothes a size up, or giving in to wearing maternity clothes for the next seven months.

I can't imagine that the "liberating benefits" of being pregnant amounted to a hill of beans when she realized that.